Founder Highlight

Lizzy is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Blueprint Registry. Lizzy started her entrepreneurial journey by founding In.Bounds in 2012, a non-profit crowd fundraising platform aimed at inner-city youth athletics. In.Bounds was acquired by Sports in School in 2014, where she is now an executive board member.

Prior to that, Lizzy founded Showman Design, LLC, a design consulting firm where she managed art direction, relationships, and new business for multinational corporations (Sikorsky, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft) and startups.

Lizzy graduated from the University of Washington where she received a B.A. in Visual Communication Design and holds a Master’s in Design from the School of Visual Arts. In 2014, Lizzy was named Print Magazine’s top 20 designers under 30.

What is your founder story?

Blueprint was born out of the frustration my co-founder Nevin and I experienced when we were buying and registering for home furnishings online. At the time, I was finishing my master’s degree in design and was also engaged to be married.

Nevin came to me with the idea of shopping online through visual blueprints as a way to discover new products. For me, registering had been a huge pain point. We had three different registries, with a random selection of items and no real sense of what we needed.

The idea was intriguing and relevant for what I was going through. After a few weeks of assessing the competition and market value, Nevin and I decided to partner and start Blueprint Registry in April 2013.

In your opinion, what is something retail tech founders should know about working with large retailers?

There are endless learning opportunities when working with large retailers; however, you should be prepared to be persistent, accept constructive criticism, and highlight opportunities while mitigating risk.

Who was your most recent hire and why?

We recently hired a content manager who is creating evergreen content so we can grow and expand our SEO presence. We have seen an impact, as our organic search is up 96% year-over-year.

What’s the biggest challenge to overcome in your industry right now?

Continuing to keep up with users demands and wants. What sets one company apart from the next are features, price, and UX/UI. We are challenged everyday to continue to improve every area of our site to keep up with these demands so we can ensure we are acquiring new users at an increased pace.

How does the decline in brick-and-mortar retail affect you?

This is a double-edged sword for our business, as we are all online. That said, a big driver of user acquisition is the fact they can register at brick-and-mortar stores and sync them on Blueprint.

We believe that the shift from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce is inevitable, but there will always be a need for in-person experience (window shopping, returns, social interaction, etc.). The biggest winners will be those companies that seamlessly combine the two.

What are some of the trends in the wedding/gifting industry that you see are working in your favor?

Gifting cash virtually is one of the fastest growing areas in the wedding and registry market. We see this seismic shift as a massive opportunity and are continuing to build products and improved UX/UI experiences to match this need.

The purpose of Techstars Worldwide Network is to help entrepreneurs succeed. Check out the impact of the Techstars’ network over the past 10 years.